Do Dooni Chaar Review

09

October

Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh return to big screen as a pair in director Habib Faisal’s film Do Dooni Chaar.

Keeping up with Joneses isn’t easy for the Duggals. Mr. Duggal (Rishi Kapoor) is a maths teacher in a school and earns a salary that merely provides for hand to mouth existence for his middle-class family. Mrs. Duggal (Neetu Singh) is a quintessential housewife with aspirations for a better social status. Their two kids, a teenage daughter and a school-going son, crave for all the things Gen X can’t do without.

It’s a sight to see the Duggals trundling down the road on a run-down scooter. But then Mr. Duggal, despite his paltry income that falls short of household expenditures, dares to dream of owning a car. “Duggal ke ghar ke aage car hogi hogi,” he slams his fist emphatically. Easier said than done, coz in spite of the tight-fisted Mrs. Duggal’s savings and cost cutting, owning a car seems an elusive dream unless Mr. Duggal compromises with some of his principles.

Simple, humorous, and totally relatable, Do Dooni Chaar is a small film with a big heart. The bourgeois mindset with all its dreams and aspirations is nicely laid out in the tale of the Duggals as they share their happiness, anxieties, fantasies and frustrations in pursuit of a chimera.

Rishi Kapoor and wife Neetu Singh carry the film on their dependable shoulders. Rishi is natural in every scene while Neetu is a sheer delight in her comeback role after a long time. Last, she was seen making a fleeting appearance at the end of Love Aaj Kal. Aditi Vasudev and Archit Krishna as the Duggal siblings shine in respective roles.

Director Habib Faizal makes an impressive debut in a film that takes its viewers into the household of a typical middle-class family in Delhi. It’s the kind of cinema that reminds one of Dibakar Banerjee’s Khosla Ka Ghosla. It’s funny, ironic, emotive and captivating.